Exposing the Emotional Work of Crossing Borders

• In Event: Roundtable Session 78
  In Roundtable Session: Photovoice and Going Above and Beyond Being Faculty: Caring, Advocacy, and Passion

Abstract

Purpose
Our contribution to the gallery will be a discussion about the work of a senior faculty member who, with purpose, navigates across multiple borders in his work, thereby engaging in “emotional labor” (Bellas, 1999; Hocschild, 1983). Specifically, this senior faculty member/current departmental chair moves across disciplinary boundaries; the seeming formidable boundaries between communities of practice, policy, and scholarship; administrative and scholarly roles, and perhaps most compellingly, between the socio and politically constructed boundaries that divide his native Mexico and his current home in the U.S.
Theoretical Framework
Our conversation will be informed by the theory of “emotional labor” (Hocschild, 1983). In its original conceptualization, Hocschild defined emotional labor as those jobs that “involve face-to-face contact…with the public; require that workers produce an emotional state in another person; and allow employers to control the emotional activities of workers” (p. 8). Hocschild noted the need/expectation for professors to “serve” while conjuring up displays of kindness and investment, especially through the tenets of teaching and service. On the other hand, although not noted by Hocschild, but pointed out by Bellas (1999), the same professor is, then, expected to detach from her scholarly endeavors, objectifying the subjects/topics of study, and controlling for emotion. We take these insights, and though our photo and dialogical methods, work with them to consider the emotional labor involved in negotiating and navigating across the borders that structure/divide/join academia and local communities, communities of practice, and other settings.
Modes of Inquiry
This study combines elements of visual ethnography (Pink, 2006; Goldman-Segall, 1998) and photovoice (Guillemin & Drew, 2010; Wang & Burris, 1997). The senior scholar, described above, was provided with instructions for taking approximately 24 digital photographs: “take pictures of what it is like/what you feel like when you navigate the boundaries that seem to divide 1) academia and your local community; 2) academia and communities of practice; 3) your work as a scholar and as an administrator. In two subsequent interviews, the junior faculty member asked the senior faculty to choose several photographs and to describe them in relation to this notion of emotional labor. Interview transcripts were transcribed and standard qualitative data analysis procedures followed (Bogdan & Biklen, 2004). Member’s check and continual dialogue informed the analysis which was represented by five photographs chosen by the senior scholar and junior faculty member for presentation at AERA. Following, the community gallery gathering at AERA, we asked the senior faculty to describe her experiences and how that might have changed the way he understood his photographs or might take different photographs.
Analytical Argument & Significance
The dialogue will illuminate how one scholar has taken agency over his work, navigating what seem to be ossified boundaries, but it will also problematize how such work requires deep emotional labor, exposing another way in which emotions constitute “materials” to be manipulated. Given the conference theme, we feel that our work showcases how it is “not enough to know” but that acting can impose arduous, but invisible demands of emotional labor.

Authors

• Leslie D. Gonzales, Clemson University

• Rodolfo Rincones, The University of Texas - El Paso